Monthly Archives: June 2013

This is the old Stearns & Fosters mattress building in a neighborhood near where I live that I said I had to get pictures of before someone decides to tear it down completely. I just thought the ruin it’s become was really beautiful in it’s way now (after a fire and years of deterioration, from what my mother says, as she worked there for several years). I did numerous variations with the photos I got, but these four are favorites- especially the one above. I uploaded several onto my zazzle site (http://www.zazzle.com/amongtheashes) and bought the color copy below for my mother recently. She has good memories from this place and liked most how that one turned out.

A recent piece. I wanted to try painting movement/motion (I referenced a photo and added ideas). I don’t practice it enough and know the expression is not as strong as I intended, so everything now looks weird, but it’s an attempt. With work these days taking over, I’m most happy I actually completed something I planned to do. It was like finally taking a breath.

I couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity than the one I’m trying to maintain now. Full time, a job where I work by myself for the most part…and apart from the heavy lifting, I have a good handle on everything I do.

So why is this becoming a placement I can’t imagine surviving? Why does everything I want become something I end up hating? Makes me believe I can’t trust anything I may want ever again. I don’t want to invite more pain, but in trying to avoid it I seem to run right into it. And when that’s not happening, I’m punishing myself for not feeling as I should – as I believe others expect I should feel – about what I have and how much worse things could be.

And when all is settled, the only thing I want and need too much is to be told I’ve done well. Everyone else has a power over me, and it will be that way until I stop acting as if it’s truly possible for me to be close to others now or thought of as more than disposable and useless in my own mind.

This is something I wrote just yesterday. One day I hope to put these lines as lyrics with music, but I may not ever have that kind of time again (definitely not soon) For now they’re just lines for my own comfort.

Maybe I should keep away…

No more quiet, no more needing and needing in silence.
Turn one day until weeks-
Until “away”can be all to expect from me.

But I chose the side
That, for everyone else but myself, was right
And I’m losing her.

Maybe this can be easier…
Forgive my failure, forgive the love and light
All this time I’ve wasted begging you were.

Keep away long enough and you will
Forget who you cannot find.
You forget and move beyond our divide-